lly the grand meg and the grand dab.
Given Louis XV. they call the King of France "le Marquis de Pantin."
And behold, they are almost gay.
A sort of gleam proceeds from these miserable wretches, as though their consciences were not heavy within them any more.
These lamentable tribes of darkness have no longer merely the desperate audacity of actions, they possess the heedless audacity of mind.
A sign that they are losing the sense of their criminality, and that they feel, even among thinkers and dreamers, some indefinable support which the latter themselves know not of. A sign that theft and pillage are beginning to filter into doctrines and sophisms, in such a way as to lose somewhat of their ugliness, while communicating much of it to sophisms and doctrines.
A sign, in short, of some outbreak which is prodigious and near unless some diversion shall arise.
Let us pause a moment.
Whom are we accusing here?
Is it the eighteenth century?
Is it philosophy?
Certainly not.
The work of the eighteenth century is healthy and good and wholesome. The encyclopedists, Diderot at their head; the physiocrates, Turgot at their head; the philosophers, Voltaire at their head; the Utopians, Rousseau at their head,--these are four sacred legions. Humanity''s immense advance towards the light is due to them. They are the four vanguards of the human race, marching towards the four cardinal points of progress.